No one wants a clunky sales experience. Not sales reps. Not clients. Yet far too often, the sales journey includes unfortunate obstacles such as tech demo interfaces that fizzle instead of sizzle.
As one Harvard Business Review article noted, around two-thirds of B2B salespeople are deemed average—at best. Those ratings come straight from customers’ mouths. And they’re not what any salesperson wants to hear.
What’s the underlying pet peeve causing so many customer complaints? There are two, actually. The first is a sales experience that’s not customer-centric or personalized. That is, the sale focuses on the product or service and its features, not on the buyer’s issues. The second is inconsistency.
When customers can’t rely on a dependable sales and service process, they’re likely to head out the door for the competition.
Serial entrepreneur Yoav Vilner calls those two problems “massive barriers” when it comes to completing sales transactions and scaling companies. A champion of sales teams, Vilner’s made it his mission to smash those barriers with innovative solutions.
As a result, co-founder Danni Friedland and a team of innovators launched Walnut as an all-encompassing, streamlined sales platform.
Cracking the Shell of Uneven, Unsatisfying Sales Experiences
Walnut’s brilliance lies in its simplicity for end users. The cloud-based sales platform allows sales professionals without coding experience to effortlessly create self-guided B2B buyer demos.
Every demo is guaranteed to run smoothly from start to finish because it’s in a fail-free cloud environment. Plus, each demo can be individualized and customized to match a specific prospect’s needs.
Why focus on improving the sales experience through demos in the first place, though? Sales demos have long been used at various points in the customer exploration process. They’re especially popular with virtual selling. However, they have an uneven and sometimes embarrassing track record.
Even Bill Gates struggled to overcome the Blue Screen of Death when demoing Windows 98. His cringe-worthy video proves a point: If a tech mastermind can be sidelined by a cranky demo, any salesperson’s at risk. Walnut helps remove the risk—and the chance for major embarrassment when trying to wow buyers.
Compelling Experiences Across the Prospect Journey
Walnut makes it simpler for companies to leverage dramatic, dependable demos as part of the lead generation and conversion process.
To be sure, Walnut-generated sales demos offer sales leaders and employees the chance to utilize demos at various stages. For example, demos can be added to landing pages to intrigue prospects at the beginning of their sales exploration. Demos can be emailed to buyers further down the sales funnel when intent is high. And they can become an essential part of a final sales meeting to close deals faster. That’s part of their power and utility.
Aside from versatility, Walnut’s unique SaaS offerings carry a unique advantage: They’re designed to capture relevant data. When prospects interact with Walnut demos, their behaviors are tracked and collected. Those valuable insights can then be used by sales and marketing groups to understand customer habits—and tweak future demo iterations.
Paul St. John, formerly of GitHub, knows the value of and need for disruptive, pioneering tools like Walnut. From his perspective as a sales client, Walnut “…makes every interaction with the customer relevant the first time by allowing sales teams to show, share and optimize interactive product demos that are personalized. Customers see how the product solves their pain, how they would actually use it, and that helps the sales process go much faster.”
In all businesses, sales teams are wondering how to improve their customer satisfaction ratings and land more deals. Walnut demos can serve as a proactive, fresh way to open up client conversations—and a spigot to higher conversions.
Deanna Ritchie
Managing Editor at ReadWrite
Deanna is the Managing Editor at ReadWrite. Previously she worked as the Editor in Chief for Startup Grind and has over 20+ years of experience in content management and content development.
